Staggering slowly up the glacier with my overloaded backpack, bearing the queer tin cross, I felt like some kind of strange Penitente. were I to break through the veneer of snow over a hidden crevasse, though, the curtain rods would -- I hoped mightily -- span the slot and keep me from dropping into the chilly bowels of the Baird.

The sounds reminded her of the mournful lowing of cattle in Amarillo years ago, and when, in 1954, she painted a searing orange and yellow picture, possibly an equivalent of the moving Penitente dirge, she named it From the Plains II.

It was as if she felt a kinship with his somber Catholic spiritualism, which had something in common with the mentality that produced the menacing mood in her paintings of New Mexican Penitente crosses.

They were not the kind of people to attract attention, so they had no reason to fear raids by Sheriff Bogardus, nor was Tranquilino disposed toward the Penitente movement, so there was no danger of his being clubbed by the deputies.